Blanchot's thought has often been understood as a critique and a reversal of Heidegger's. Indeed, many formulas of the former are construed as mere inversions of the latter. Yet, the philosophical problem raised by the encounter between Blanchot and Heidegger cannot be suffciently accounted for in terms of 'inversion' or 'reversal'. Focusing on the question of the secret in its relation to Geheimnis , this essay starts with a discussion of the notion of secrecy in relation to mysticism and argues (...) that this difference should not be construed in terms of a disjunction. Blanchot's relation to Heidegger is not on a par with Levinas' critical account of the latter; that to acknowledge the centrality of the secret does not commit one to mysticism; and that Blanchot's ultimate claims about the neuter commit him to a position that is much closer to Heidegger's than his apparent disavowal of the latter would seem to entail. (shrink)

It is a commonplace assumption that there are realities and types of experience words are just not able to handle. I find the recourse to ineffability to be an evasive tactic and argue that there is inherently nothing beyond words and that this fact has ethical implications. I offer three theoretical considerations in support of my claim. The first two deal with the infinite nature of language itself, as understood first in Chomsky and then Derrida. The third deals with the (...) linguistically structured nature of human experience. Expanding on Heidegger, I then draw some ethical implications from language’s inexhaustibility. (shrink)

Heidegger presciently diagnosed the current crisis in higher education. Contemporary theorists like Bill Readings extend and update Heidegger's critique, documenting the increasing instrumentalization, professionalization, vocationalization, corporatization, and technologization of the modern university, the dissolution of its unifying and guiding ideals, and, consequently, the growing hyper-specialization and ruinous fragmentation of its departments. Unlike Heidegger, however, these critics do not recognize such disturbing trends as interlocking symptoms of an underlying ontological problem and so they provide no positive vision for the future of (...) higher education. By understanding our educational crisis 'ontohistorically', Heidegger is able to develop an alternative, ontological conception of education which he hopes will help bring about a renaissance of the university. In a provocative reading of Plato's famous 'allegory of the cave', Heidegger excavates and appropriates the original Western educational ideal of Platonic paideia, outlining the pedagogy of an ontological education capable of directly challenging the 'technological understanding of being' he holds responsible for our contemporary educational crisis. This notion of ontological education can best be understood as a philosophical perfectionism, a re-essentialization of the currently empty ideal of educational 'excellence' by which Heidegger believes we can reconnect teaching to research and, ultimately, reunify and revitalize the university itself. (shrink)

In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary named “post-truth” the word of the year. In the ongoing debate about post-truth it is generally assumed that facts and truth have ceased to be relevant to politics. However, questions are seldom raised about the role of truth-claims in politics, why facts matter in political contexts, or what we even mean with words such as fact and lies in politics. A general aim of the present study is to shed light on these questions. Not, however, (...) by engaging directly in the debate about post-truth, but by investigating the relation between politics and truth in the philosophical work of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. In 1945 Arendt suggested that fascism had invented a way of “lying the truth”. She later came to call this invention the modern political lie, seeing it as one of the key elements that crystallized into totalitarianism. The study explores the paradoxical relation between politics and truth in totalitarian movements, which can reinvent itself in non-totalitarian forms in contemporary democracies. Parts of Arendt’s analysis are implicit but can be made explicit against the background of Heidegger’s political writings. Heidegger is not an advocate of the modern political lie, nonetheless his writings from the 1930s, while a member of the National Socialist party, reflect aspects of the paradoxical relation between politics and truth in totalitarian movements. Studying Heidegger and Arendt together can therefore shed light on the specific problems that Arendt addressed regarding truth and lying in politics. The study investigates the relation between politics and truth in Heidegger and Arendt respectively, but also the relation between their works. It shows that there is a proto-political aspect already in Heidegger’s early articulations of truth as aletheia and explores the central role of truth in his political writings from the 1930s. Against the background of Heidegger, Arendt’s works on the modern political lie are analyzed. The study also investigates the concept of truth developed by Arendt in works after The Origins of Totalitarianism, arguing that it should be seen partly as a response to the modern political lie. (shrink)

If Martin Heidegger was a philosopher who poetized, Wallace Stevens was a poet who philosophized. In "The Sail of Ulysses," one of his later poems, Stevens speaks enigmatically of a "right to be." The phrase is straightforward, if taken to indicate the right to life. But Stevens is rarely, if ever, straightforward. The poem is much more understandable if we take "being" in a Heideggerian sense, as an understanding of what it means to be.

Antisemitism is fun. This essay explains why and proposes a new approach to combating it.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the anthropologization of Dasein-psyche’s being by methods of neurophilosophy. The anthropologization of Dasein-psyche’s being by methods of neurophilosophy allows considering the noogenesis from the perspective of philosophical traditions, which is much richer in comparison with the history of scientific knowledge about the psychology of meanings. The being of Dasein-psyche in the meaning of "philosopher’s soul" was firstly mentioned by Plato in "Phaedo". The anthropologization of Dasein-psyche’s being reveals the ontological orientation and limits (...) of the being of Dasein-psyche within the being of Dasein-the-One, as well as the intellect, knowledge and techne, as the arete existentials. Theoretical basis of the study is built on Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and methods of neurophilosophy. Originality lies in exploring Dasein-psyche through the neurophilosophical approach. In the context, Dasein-psyche is revealed as a part of the whole or the image, created from Dasein-Y-Matter as a paradigm. It is formed by the factors and causes of complication, as well as by the experience of being of the previous states of matter. Conclusions. In conclusion, the anthropologization of Dasein-psyche’s being by methods of neurophilosophy allows considering the noogenesis from the perspective of philosophical traditions. The essence of a person is revealed as the arete existentials, which require further rethinking and clarification. (shrink)

One of Heidegger’s enduring concerns was to develop an original meditation on the meaning of (the presence of) the present. Integral to this attempt is his critique of the understanding of the being of beings in terms of the objectivity of the object. In this paper, I trace Heidegger’s analyses of objectivity, through which Heidegger consistently establishes objectivity as non-primordial and derivative. In order to do this, however, Heidegger had to identify a specific, narrow (spatio-temporalized) conception of objectivity (in terms (...) of Gegenstehenlassen and Vorstellen) as the hallmark of modern philosophy. I show that it is unclear whether that conception is a justified result or rather an unjustified presupposition of his approach. I then suggest what meanings of objectivity might be lost after Heidegger, by pointing to several aspects of Hegel’s notion of objectivity that are incompatible with Heidegger’s account, to wit: the lack of ‘subject-object’-terminology in his definitions of objectivity; the special language of ‘forms of’ objectivity; Hegel’s critique of representation; his notion of Gegenstand as a content with a categorical form, and, finally, that Aristotle’s notion of hypokeimenon might provide a clue as to how Hegel’s notion of object can be understood. (shrink)

This thesis examines the tension between the notions of free will and determinism, and how such a tension emanates from a view of freedom which is erroneous. The project starts by showing the presentation of the tension in traditional philosophy, before showing why such a presentation is misplaced once we come to see that freedom itself is only comprehensible within the world. Such an observation provides a way of constructing a new and original notion of freedom, which is more than (...) just a matter of being free to choose, but also encompasses the effect these choices have on us in the form of self-disclosure. Thus, our freedom to choose makes possible self-evaluation and re-evaluation in the context of the world within which our choices are made. Such a notion of freedom affords us the benefit of being able to see that determinism, which is taken here to result from our scientific understanding of ourselves and the world around us, itself rests upon, or is only intelligible on the basis of, our being free in the first place. The thesis thus achieves two goals: on the one hand, it provides us with a new and original notion of freedom, which coheres with the sense-making activity of creatures in a world. On the other hand, it demonstrates how such a notion of freedom can defend itself against the traditional determinist criticism. (shrink)

This paper outlines the fundamental aspects of a Heideggerian-ecofeminist philosophy. It aims to be suggestive rather than definitive regarding the form and function of such a philosophy and will, consequently, be somewhat partial and incomplete. It is intended to highlight the enormous potential of such a hybrid philosophy. To this end it will provide a brief account of the philosophy of the later Heidegger, with particular emphasis on his analysis of technology and his account of the Greek concept of truth (...) as aletheia, or unconcealment. It will also focus on Heidegger’s account of the connection between the Greek concept of nature as physis and his own ontology of Being, “letting-be” as the appropriate attitudinal stance to existence, and the bearing of all the above on contemporary ecological concerns. (shrink)

This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On the one hand, we aim to show how the Anthropocene occasions an experience of our inescapable inclusion in the technological structuring of reality that Martin Heidegger associates with cybernetics. On the other hand, by confronting Heidegger’s thought on technology with Georges Bataille’s consideration of technological existence as economic and averted existence, we will criticize Heidegger’s account by arguing that notwithstanding its inescapable inclusion in cybernetics, technology in the (...) Anthropocene itself fosters an experience of what remains excluded. We conclude by indicating how such an experience is relevant for contemporary philosophical investigation of technology. (shrink)

Experts in medical informatics have argued for the incorporation of ever more machine-learning algorithms into medical care. As artificial intelligence research advances, such technologies raise the possibility of an “iDoctor,” a machine theoretically capable of replacing the judgment of primary care physicians. In this article, I draw on Martin Heidegger’s critique of technology to show how an algorithmic approach to medicine distorts the physician–patient relationship. Among other problems, AI cannot adapt guidelines according to the individual patient’s needs. In response to (...) the objection that AI could develop this capacity, I use Hubert Dreyfus’s analysis of AI to argue that attention to the needs of each patient requires the physician to attune his or her perception to the patient’s history and physical exam, an ability that seems uniquely human. Human physician judgment will remain better suited to the practice of primary care despite anticipated advances in AI technology. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the academic debate on the general crisis faced by law schools and the legal professions by discussing why juristic practice is a matter of experience rather than knowledge. Through a critical contextualisation of Vilhelm Lundstedt’s thought under processes of globalisation and transnationalism, it is argued that the demise of the jurist’s function is related to law’s scientification as brought about by the metaphysical construction of reality. The suggested roadmap will in turn reveal that the (...) current voiding of juristic practice and its teaching is part of the crisis regarding what makes us human. (shrink)

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s seminal essay “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”, published in 1954, is one of the texts which has had most influence on architectural thinking in the second half of 20th and early 21st century. What much of modern and postmodern architectural thinking extracts from Heidegger’s text and revolves around is the understanding of building and dwelling as more or less abstract forms of being without taking into account the people inhabiting space. In these traditions little has been said (...) about what the Danish architect Jørn Utzon adds to the term “being” and announces as the most important aspect of architecture: Well-being understood as human well-being. The present paper means to re-interpret Heidegger’s text critically in order to rethink dwelling and building within an architectural context, presenting Jørn Utzon’s work and thinking as a lifelong search for the architecture of well-being. (shrink)

This paper argues for an interpretation of what Heidegger means by 'angst' in Being and Time that begins from the methodological role angst is supposed to play in Division I as that which disrupts falling. It argues that angst is a distinctive kind of ontological insight.

Ernst Tugendhat’s critique of Martin Heidegger’s conception of truth is an ongoing topic in Heideggerian scholarship. In this paper, I contribute to the ongoing exchange between defenders of Heidegger and those who are in agreement with Tugendhat. Specifically, I contend that Tugendhat’s criticisms fail to situate Heidegger’s account of truth within his broader phenomenological–hermeneutic project. In the end, Tugendhat’s critique is grounded upon philosophical assumptions that Heidegger is bringing under question by rethinking the concept of truth. I suggest that thinking (...) through Tugendhat’s critique and attempting to formulate an adequate Heideggerian response gives us a richer understanding of both Heidegger’s account of truth and his general philosophical project. (shrink)

Recent scholarship on the nature of truth within Hans-Georg Gadamer’s and Martin Heidegger’s philosophies has focused primarily on identifying and explicating the commonality between their respective accounts of truth. However, this emphasis on commonality has overlooked Gadamer’s distinctive understanding of truth outside of and beyond a simple development of Heidegger’s consideration of truth as alētheia. This paper defends the claim that the specific manner in which Gadamer and Heidegger critique the correspondence theory of truth is indicative of their distinctive conceptions (...) of truth more generally. While Heidegger understands truth as the unconcealment of beings through the disclosure of Dasein as Being-in-the-world as such, Gadamer concludes that truth is the disclosure of human being through hermeneutical understanding as realized in concrete dialogical engagement in particular. These similar, but often conflicting, accounts of truth cannot be subsumed within one another without overlooking and thereby misunderstanding the philosophical insights found in Gadamer’s and Heidegger’s distinctive philosophies. More importantly, the inability or unwillingness to distinguish their conceptions of truth prevents any subsequent analysis of which thinker provides a more compelling critique of the correspondence theory of truth and which account is more plausible as an understanding of the phenomenon of truth broadly construed. This paper ends with a brief defense of Gadamer's understanding of truth. (shrink)

This work is a revised version of my dissertation, originally presented in 2002. It explores questions of God and faith in the context of Martin Heidegger's phenomenological ontology, as developed in Being and Time. One problem with traditional philosophical approaches to the question of God is their tendency to regard God's existence as an objective datum, which might be proven or disproven through logical argumentation. Since Kant, such arguments have largely been dismissed as predicated on a priori assumptions whose legitimacy (...) cannot be substantiated. This dismissal has led to a widening divorce between 'faith' and 'reason,' as the rational grounds for faith have come under increasing, and radical, attack. Heidegger's phenomenological ontology provides us a new approach to the question of faith by showing that concernful relations lie at the heart of our apprehension of Being. This affords us a new way of approaching the question of God philosophically; one which pursues this question, not in terms of metaphysical categories, but in terms of the existential concerns central to human life. At the same time that Heidegger allows us this new approach, however, his existential analyses seem to deny any legitimacy to religious faith. For the Heidegger of Being and Time, the human being is 'Being-towards-death,' i.e., essentially enclosed in finitude, whereas for religion the human being has an essential relation to the infinitude of God. This work, then, has a twofold purpose: It seeks, first, to explore the meaning of God and faith as these may be understood in the terms provided by Heidegger's phenomenological ontology. It seeks, second, to examine the way in which that ontology might be challenged and revised through a religious conception of human Being. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to clarify the import of the transcendence problem in Heidegger and Derrida. The guiding suggestion of my interpretations of both thinkers is that following the development of this problem through their respective projects can help to demonstrate in each an underlying continuity in light of which their seemingly discrepant shifts in emphasis from early to late can be understood as moments of an ongoing hermeneutic task. ;My argument unfolds in four chapters and a brief conclusion. Chapter one (...) motivates the project in view of the contentious standing of the problem in continental philosophy as it is characterized in the competing narratives advanced by Richard Rorty, John Caputo, and Rodolphe Gasche. ;Chapters two and three trace the problem through Heidegger's Denkweg. While Being and Time might seem to be the obvious place to start, I argue that the character of the problem is difficult to see without recourse to both the context in which the problem first arises, and the future interpretations of the problem toward which Being and Time proceeds. Accordingly, I attend to the emergence of the problem in Heidegger's dissertation and early lectures, and then leap ahead to its more explicit appropriations in the writings of 1928 where the provisional standing of fundamental ontology becomes increasingly apparent. In view of its past and future trajectories, then, I return to Being and Time to exhibit therein what I take to be latent indications of Heidegger's later disposition toward transcendence. ;Chapter four situates Derrida in terms of his debts to and departures from Heidegger. I argue that Derrida's debts in fact compel his departures; since he concurs that the transcendence of predecessor discourses necessitates their destruction in the name of advancing their undeveloped possibilities, he must dismantle Heidegger to do justice to him. In applying this insight to Derrida's project, I maintain, the careful reader can find traces of his later injunctions to "absolute responsibility" in his early affirmations of "infinite play". ;I conclude with a few brief remarks as to how this investigation might contribute to a richer understanding of contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

The “shrinking” of the globe in the last few centuries has made explicit that the world is a tense unity of many: the many worlds are forced to contend with one another. Nishida Kitarō, the founder of the Kyoto school, once stated that to be is to be implaced. We exist by partaking in “the socio-historical world.” More recently, Jean-luc Nancy has conceived of the world in terms of sense. What is striking in both is that the world emerges out (...) of a nothing, created ex nihilo—the phrase stripped of its theistic connotations. While for Nishida the world is ultimately implaced in the “place of absolute nothing,” Nancy speaks of the nothing that is the basis of the world’s self-creation. I will explore a possible convergence between these and any light it may shed upon our contemporary situation of globalization and its implications for praxis. I look to a sense of the nothing as a chōratic spatiality, an opening that provides space for co-being and serves as the source of creativity. In face of globalization, the project for meaning through mondialisation (in Nancy) and within a multi-cultural world (in Nishida) would imply the appropriation of such an originary spatiality. (shrink)

This paper attempts to mark out new ground in the connections between the philosophical writings of Martin Heidegger and Aristotle by posing an interesting question that has never been addressed. Both writers devote much of their early thoughts to questions concerning human beings' practical ways of understanding. However, in their later thoughts Heidegger and Aristotle suddenly seem to completely change the subject to ideal or transcendental ways of understanding. At first glance these ideal modes of human apprehension seem to have (...) nothing to do with each other. Yet, Heidegger and Aristotle seem to have similar motives for turning away from the practical realm and towards a transcendental realm, and they seem to have similar outcomes. My investigation of their respective motives and outcomes has led me to believe that although there are some similarities that are thought provoking, they are not strong enough to conclude that Heidegger's later writings are connected to his recovery of Aristotelian ideas. Given that the core of Heidegger's early questions of Being can be interpreted as a retrieval of Aristotle, to be able to demarcate the point at which Heidegger ceases his attempts at this recovery may allow us to examine the differences in Heidegger's later thought concerning Being. (shrink)

This paper examines medicine’s use of technology in a manner from a standpoint inspired by Heidegger’s thinking on technology. In the first part of the paper, I shall suggest an interpretation of Heidegger’s thinking on the topic, and attempt to show why he associates modern technology with danger. However, I shall also claim that there is little evidence that medicine’s appropriation of modern technology is dangerous in Heidegger’s sense, although there is no prima facie reason why it mightn’t be. The (...) explanation for this, I claim, is ethical. There is an initial attraction to the thought that Heidegger’s thought echoes Kantian moral thinking, but I shall dismiss this. Instead, I shall suggest that the considerations that make modern technology dangerous for Heidegger are simply not in the character — the ethos — of medicine properly understood. This is because there is a distinction to be drawn between chronological and historical modernity, and that even up-to-date medicine, empowered by technology, retains in its ethos crucial aspects of a historically pre-modern understanding of technology. A large part of the latter half of the paper will be concerned with explaining the difference. (shrink)

What scope is there for emancipatory politics in light of the postmodern critique of philosophical foundations? This paper examines the response to this question by Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo, who for over two decades has defended the emancipatory prospects of what he terms ‘nihilism’. Vattimo conceives the retreat of metaphysics as a progressive weakening of ontological claims and an opening towards new and diverse modes of being. In his view, far from an exclusively tragic experience of loss or meaninglessness, nihilism (...) is a steadily expanding narrative that invites us to face up to our own radical freedom. The paper sets out Vattimo's central arguments and contrasts the ethical thrust of his ‘emancipatory nihilism’ with the distinctly political take on emancipation presented by Ernesto Laclau. While the two converge on the withdrawal of metaphysics as the premise for a radical and democratic freedom, Vattimo's vision remains insufficiently focused on the dynamics of contestation that a generalized nihilism implies. (shrink)

This article reflects on the received view of the rupture which constitutes the beginning of a critical, ethical, political and legal opening, the understanding of which inhabits the cry of, and response to, injustice. It takes the very critique that feeds into, and is distorted by, practical reasoning, as its point of departure. Grasping this rupture as the complementary relation between deconstruction and radical alterity, would entail unreflectively accepting a certain kind of truthfulness—truthfulness as [in]correctness, manifesting in a relationship that (...) involves rootless and controlling movement of making and unmaking of world. In closely reading Wittgenstein and Heidegger on the level of seeing, showing and saying, truthfulness is shown to contain an essential tension between, on the one hand, the Socratic, metaphysically-bound notion of beingness, correctness and meaning-steering and, on the other hand, the pre-Socratic notion of unconcealment (a-lethia), which, pointing even earlier than pre-Socratics into aboriginality, involves attentive letting of gliding in the inexpressible saying of language. While steering is about generating new possibilities of expressibility, gliding is about poetic dwelling, or enduring inexpressibility as a constitutive part of saying. Although aletheia is taken to be the key influence on rootless post-foundational thinking, it is argued that unconcealment involves letting and enduring the presencing inexpressibility of place and home-coming, that is, worlding-rootedness; thus showing Heidegger’s originary politics as the district of the uncanny to be about worlding that attentively lets the presencing inexpressibility of earth be as place. In reading Heidegger’s views on humanism, beginning and language, the argument links inexpressibility—essentially and historically—to the grasping of the belongingness together of world, earth and place, viewing this belongingness as key to both the saying of art and of mortals dwelling together temporally, spatially, materially in a manner always strange to, and nearer than, the steering/controlling of beingness, time, space and place that the very gesture and emergence of critique is captive of and is not capable of attuning to and capturing. Art always estranges the metaphysical cycle of correctness which preserves pain and suffering—a cycle that inhabits a double bind of responding to violence and injustice generated by the violence of metaphysics with metaphysical violence and justice. In showing essential strife within truthfulness itself, Heidegger points to even greater and earlier problematic than the pre-Socratics—to the painful core of inexpressibility between the ontology of steering time, spaces and material—steering places—and the gliding temporality, spatiality and materiality of ontology of place. (shrink)

Science teaching always engages a philosophy of science. This article introduces a modern philosophy of science and indicates its implications for science education. The hermeneutic philosophy of science is the tradition of Kant, Heidegger, and Heelan. Essential to this tradition are two concepts of truth, truth as correspondence and truth as disclosure. It is these concepts that enable access to science in and of itself. Modern science forces aspects of reality to reveal themselves to human beings in events of disclosure. (...) The achievement of each event of disclosure requires the precise manipulation of equipment, which is an activity that depends on truth as correspondence. The implications of the hermeneutic philosophy of science for science education are profound. The article refers to Newton’s early work on optics to explore what the theory implies for teaching. Modern science—as the event of truth—is a relationship between an individual student, equipment, and reality. Science teachers provide for their students’ access to truth and they may show how their discipline holds a special relationship to reality. If the aim of science teaching is to enable students to disclose reality, the science curriculum will challenge some of the current practices of schooling. If teachers base science teaching upon the hermeneutic philosophy of science, science will assert itself as the intellectual discipline that derives from nature, and not from the inclinations of human beings. Science teachers teach nature’s own science. (shrink)

The relationship of Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger has always been complex, encompassing an entanglement of two already immense networks and suspended between proximities and distances from infinitesimal to radical. Its peculiarity is evident in the way in which Derrida strategically inscribes his own text at the margin of Heidegger's thought via a double or cl6tural gesture which articulates the paradox that Derrida writes with Heidegger against Heidegger. One of the most decisive aspects of this gesture is Derrida's deconstruction of (...) Heidegger's claims regarding the relation between technology and philosophy. In "The Question Concerning Technology" and accompanying essays Heidegger opens up a way of reflecting upon the essence of technology moves against its metaphysical determination specifying, moreover, the sense of modern technology as a mode of disclosure. These reflections are, however, ambiguous. Heidegger is one of the first thinkers to confront technology in philosophical terms, and yet he wishes to purify thinking of originary technicity. Technology remains a question, and as a question asked by thinking, thinking is not technical. In other words, thinking for Heidegger, is constituted in its very difference from technology. This is the move that must be deconstructed. In simultaneously repeating and displacing the Heideggerian scheme, Derrida elaborates an infinitesimal and decisive différance between the thinking of Being and his own notion of "writing" (Vecriture) or generalized inscription. What is crucial is that as against Heidegger's Being, the general text is not an essence of technics nor is it a proper thinking opposed to technology. On the contrary, Derrida's main point, among other things, against Heidegger, is that technology has always already begun, that it is originary with respect to the history of Being and thinking. In this study I examine the stakes and implications of Derrida's move along with a possible Heideggerian response. To begin with, I develop a reading of Heidegger's text that shows the import of technology to his work as a whole and its centrality to the thinking of Being as difference. I then take up the question of Derrida's deconstruction of Heidegger's analysis of the history of Being and its technological completion as this is played out in The Post Card and related texts. Following this I revert back to Derrida's now "classic" writings of the late 1960s and early 1970s and explore the arguments that relate contemporary developments in technology, science, and the media to the problematic of writing and to the closure of logocentric metaphysics. The preceding chapters lay the groundwork for me to then offer a critical reading of Derrida's text that locates in the articulations and assumptions of deconstruction certain indications of its belonging, within the horizon of Heidegger's thinking of technology. Finally, I offer a reading of some of Derrida's later texts with the aim of showing that and how deconstruction emerges as an affirmative technology. (shrink)

This essay argues that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of nature as a “privileged expression” of ontology provides the conceptual support for a more responsible attitude toward humans and nature. Furthermore, this concept of nature needs to be viewed in the light of a more profound concept that opens a new vision of the human being’s place in the world, namely Merleau-Ponty’s fields of perception. Shiva’s writings pertaining to the environment gain a more profound, yet critical, understanding when viewed in this way. Similarly, (...) Merleau-Ponty’s attempts “to reconcile the old world and the new” (MP 1964, 4) through implementation of his phenomenology to political and ethical questions is reviewed anew. (shrink)

This thesis develops a hermeneutic philosophy of science to provide insights into physics education. -/- Modernity cloaks the authentic character of modern physics whenever discoveries entertain us or we judge theory by its use. Those who justify physics education through an appeal to its utility, or who reject truth as an aspect of physics, relativists and constructivists, misunderstand the nature of physics. Demonstrations, not experiments, reveal the essence of physics as two characteristic engagements with truth. First, truth in its guise (...) as correspondence enables a human being to prepare for the distinctive event of physics. -/- Second, the event of physics occurs in human perception when someone forces a hidden reality to disclose an aspect of itself. Thus, the ground of physics is our human involvement with reality achieved by way of truth. -/- To support this account of physics, the thesis reports phenomenological investigations into Isaac Newton’s involvement with optics and a secondary school physics laboratory. These involve interpretations of Heidegger’s theory of beings, schema and signification. The project draws upon, and contributes to, the hermeneutic phenomenology of modern physics, a tradition in continental philosophy that begins with Immanuel Kant, and advances particularly from Martin Heidegger to Patrick Heelan. -/- The thesis advocates an ontological pedagogy for modern physics which has as its purpose each individual student’s engagement with reality and truth. Students may achieve this through demonstrations of phenomena that will enable them to dwell with physics, an experience that contrasts with their embroilment in modernity, and which perpetuates nature’s own science. (shrink)

This paper develops a new interpretation of Heidegger's concept of conscience in order to show to what extent his thought establishes the possibility of civil disobedience. The origin of conscience lies in the self's appropriation of language as inviting a reciprocal response of the other (person). By developing the social dimension of dialogue, it is showsn that conscience reveals the self in its capacity for dissent, free speech, and civil disobedience. By developing the social roots of conscience, a completely new (...) light is cast on the political implications of Heidegger's thought. (shrink)

This paper carries out an intensive study of Heidegger's famous reflection on the word dao and of his citations from the Daodejing, with the purpose of elucidating his complex relation with Daoist thinking. First I examine whether dao could be said to be a guideword for Heidegger's path of thinking. Then I discuss Heidegger's citations, in six places of his writings, from five chapters of the Daodejing, by situating them in the immediate textual context as well as against the broad (...) background of the fundamental presuppositions and orientations of Heidegger and Laozi's thinking. My examination of Heidegger's citations from the Daodejing has for the first time gathered together all the relevant materials discovered so far. (shrink)

April 15, 2024: This article published in Early View in error. The article will republish shortly.

There is relatively little comprehensive treatment of Heidegger’s theory of essences despite his ubiquitous use of essences. It is commonplace in contemporary analytic philosophy to view essences as the ground for true de re modal claims. I argue that Heidegger offers an account of essences that can best be understood as a type of relative essentialism. Relative essentialism is the view that more than one being can occupy the same space at the same time and those beings have distinct sets (...) of de re modal truths about them. Heidegger’s account of essences allows for true de re modal claims about a wide variety of things including scientific and cultural entities. At the same time, Heidegger rejects absolute essentialism: the view that there is one privilege collection of beings whose natures determine the truth values of de re modal claims about them. Relative essentialism is distinguished from contextual essentialism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper examines Heidegger’s remarks about the worldlessness of Judaism in his Black Notebooks. In the first part of the paper I examine Heidegger’s concept of the world in Being and Time and subsequent writings. In the second part, I analyze a distinction that Heidegger draws between mere human actuality and genuine human existence in a 1932 lecture course on The Beginning of Western Philosophy. This distinction, I suggest, relates to the development of Heidegger’s thoughts on nihilism and what (...) he conceives as its gravest danger. In the third part, I argue that the above-mentioned distinction can help us to better understand Heidegger’s remarks on Judaism. In particular, I suggest that the Jewish figure comes to symbolize for Heidegger a kind of unessential human actuality that is irredeemably detached from the question of Being. (shrink)

مارتین هایدگر در آثار متأخر خود تشریح می‌کند که متافیزیک به مثابه هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی چگونه با توجه صرف به هستندگان آنها را از یک سو به جهت چیستی یا ذات مورد بررسی قرار می‌دهد و از سوی دیگر به جهت بودگی و قرار گرفتن در زنجیرۀ علّی ذیل برترین هستنده یا همان خداوند. وی با نگاه نقادانه به ساختار هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی متافیزیک، بر آن است تا تبیین کند که رویکرد هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسانه هم سبب از دست رفتن فهم هستی شده و هم در نتیجۀ (...) آن الوهیت را از جایگاه اصلی خود خارج کرده است. در این مقاله بر آنیم تا معنای هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی را در تفکر هایدگر متأخر بررسی کنیم و بدین منظور در پی آن هستیم که چگونه متافیزیک نزد هایدگر از نگاه همدلانۀ هستی‌شناسی بنیادین به رویکرد انتقادی هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی تغییر جایگاه پیدا کرد و آثار دورۀ گذار و دورۀ متأخر وی را بدین منظور مورد تأمل قرار می‏دهیم. در این مقاله با تبیین ساختار هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسانۀ متافیزیک از منظر هایدگر نشان خواهیم داد که چگونه هستی مغفول واقع شده سبب تولد الهیات متافیزیکی شده است. (shrink)

The paper discusses the possibility of applying Heidegger’s considerations on art to the problematic and multifaceted field of contemporary art. The questions of origin and essence, which we are accustomed to refer to the metaphysical tradition, take on new significance by connecting art not to beauty, but to truth. In this epochal change of position, we can find the identity of contemporary art, which reveals itself not by offering edifying meanings, but by indicating a horizon of comprehensibility in which we (...) are involved. Starting from the innovative status of the Dasein as a projecting being-in-the-world, the horizon of comprehensibility of contemporary art outlines a context in which there is no subjectivity using a work, but in which an encounter happens. In its intrinsic and sometimes complacent contradictoriness, contemporary art, especially installations and performances, always manifests its identity as a struggle between truth and untruth, as an event that has no steady ground, and no unique or ascertained origin or monolithic essence, and which is nevertheless expressive and meaningful. The quality of being an event implies that contemporary art is not something objectifiable, representable, or categorizable, but is something that happens. What happens cannot become a substantial foundation, because it remains perpetually a happening, which affects us with its different languages and perspectives. The poetic matrix of contemporary art indicates the uniqueness and unrepeatability of each work of art, which shows us how the un-originality and un-essentiality of art is the main pathway to arrive at an experience of the world that each time is like the first time. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt has become standard to treat Kant’s characterization of pure apperception as involving the claim that questions about what I think are transparent to questions about the world. By contra...

The claim that we want to put forward is that Thomas Kuhn ’s growth of knowledge concept is drawn upon Heidegger’s epistemology. To bolster the tenet the corresponding works of both thinkers are considered. As a result, the one-to-one correspondence between the key propositions of Heideggerian epistemology and the basic tenets of Kuhn ’s growth of knowledge model is dawned. The tenets under consideration include the holistic nature of a paradigm, the incommensurability thesis, conventional status of a paradigm caused by (...) pragmatist way of its vocabulary justification and even the basic instance – connection between Aristotelean and Newtonian mechanics. It is conjectured that an indirect influence of Heidegger upon Kuhn should be taken into account to explain the isomorphism. For instance, through the works of Alexandre Koyré admired by Kuhn. As is well-known, Koyré had close professional links with another Russian émigré – Alexandre Kojev – who presented in his 1933-1939 Paris lectures Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” seen through the cognitive lens of Heideggerian phenomenology. Key words: Martin Heidegger, Thomas Kuhn, growth of knowledge, paradigm, incommensurability thesis, holism, pragmatism. (shrink)

Emerging research shows that undergraduate students are searching for a deeper meaning in their lives from their university studies. Leading students forth into this kind of meaningful action is the primary responsibility of the Philosopher of Education. This paper describes how such meaningful action can be accomplished by integrating the pedagogical ontology of Martin Heidegger into a course in the history and philosophy of Education. The course challenges students to engage in the cooperative project of what John Sallis calls “world (...) building” by posing strategic questions, designing appropriate content, and demonstrating artful signs. Heidegger expects his students to rethink what it means for them to be a human being. When this identity is transformed, a new calling to think and an invocation to teach that calling can flow from that instruction. This paper describes this kind of instruction in practice by specifically characterizing what a “professor of learning to think” would be. (shrink)

This paper argues that learning is inherently violent. It examines the way in which Heidegger uses – and refrains from using – the concept in his account of Dasein. Heidegger explicitly discussed “learning” in 1951 and he used of the word in several contexts. Although he confines his use of “learning” to the ontic side of the ontic-ontological divide, there are aspects of what he says that open the door to an ontological analogue of the ontic learning. In this discussion (...) it emerges that what precludes “learning” behaving as does “willing”, “waiting” and “thanking”, is something that derives from the relatedness of Dasein. The paper finally examines violence within the disclosure of truth. The approach to the investigation is experimental and is to some extent modeled on Heidegger‟s own later enquires. (shrink)

The analysis of Dasein's struggle for authenticity will be the main focus of this article. By virtue of Dasein's ontological predispositions, selfhood is subjected to inauthentic existential modalities already constitutive of its Being. In the case of the false Dasein, fallenness is exacerbated in that Dasein constricts its comportment primarily to the modes of the inauthentic, thereby abdicating its potentiality-for-Being. The false Dasein results from ontical encounters within pre-existing deficient ontological conditions of Being-in-the-world that are thrust upon selfhood as its (...) facticity. These deficient ontological structures predispose Dasein to develop intrapsychic psychological deficits that further contribute to Dasein's false existence. Through the medium of Heidegger's existential ontology, Sartrean bad faith, and psychoanalysis, I will demonstrate that the throes of selfhood encompass a dialectical course meandering through experiential modes of authenticity and falsehood, in which this very process itself is an authentic enterprise, that is, it is the necessary constitutional structure of Dasein itself as Being-toward-becoming its possibilities. (shrink)

From the 1920s to the 1960s, Martin Heidegger on several occasions referred to the early Greeks’ encounter with what he called ‘the Asiatic’ (_das Asiatische_). Meanwhile, he was also concerned with a sort of ontological power of destruction and ruination that according to him should be understood in the Greek sense, which he also called _das Asiatische_. In this article, I first sketch the contributions made by Asian/African traditions to the origin of Greek philosophy and highlight Heidegger’s own recognition of (...) it in the 1920s. Second, I examine Nietzsche’s remarks bearing on the early Greeks’ intricate bond with the Asiatic, which is formulated in terms of a distinction between the ‘Dionysiac Greeks’ and the ‘Dionysiac barbarians.’ Third, I scrutinize Heidegger’s relevant statements—especially those in the 1930s—in the light of Nietzsche’s influence on him. I argue that two different meanings of the Asiatic are at play in Heidegger’s thought: One is the _Greek Asiatic_, the Being-historical Asiatic; The other is the _alien Asiatic_, ‘the most foreign and most difficult’ Asiatic, which has been overcome by the Greeks. Fourth, I show that in the 1960s Heidegger seems to consider a sort of conflation of these two meanings—a conflation that remains fraught with tension. (shrink)

In this article, the importance of the namelessness of language will be firstly explained through an analysis of authenticity in Heideggerian philosophy, and will be further clarified by way of the phenomenon of “profound boredom” from his Freiburg lecture. As the exploration of namelessness in Heideggerian philosophy plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between East and West, a brief comparison concerning the idea of namelessness and its underlying philosophy of language between the Heideggerian and the madhyamaka Buddhist tradition (...) will also be discussed. (shrink)

The coincidentia oppositorum formula abbreviates a profound tendency of human thought, which is present in all times and cultures. In other words, the thinking has always felt that its supreme and sublime task is to “make peace” between Perfect and Imperfect, Transcendence and Immanence, Spirit and Matter, Good and Evil. Also, almost all ontological projects axiomatically stipulate the primordiality and the superior metaphysical competence of a feeling of being, a pre-thinking disposition of the human being. In this sense, the case (...) of Martin Heidegger can be brought forth, who argues that affective disposition, that is not “affects” or “feelings” or “state of soul,” pre-determines the entire perception, understanding and outlook on the world and ourselves, and it is one that provides, in the first instance, matching the Dasein with his being. This article examines how the coincidentia oppositorum and the feeling of being are assumed and operationalized in the ontological project designed by Mihai Șora, who is considered to be “the Philosopher par excellence” in Romanian culture. (shrink)

Distance is central to both Heidegger’s depiction of being-in-the-world and Derrida’s theorization of the culture of friendship. It is equally fundamental to the structure of language and, I argue, to the concept of the foreign. This essay brings together these theories of distance and demonstrates the ways they act on and through each other, the role that linguistic distance plays in constructing both foreigners and friends, and the permeable semantic boundaries that the concept of distance shares with movement, strangeness, instability, (...) and indefiniteness. It further contends that this semantic seepage has proven threatening to certain species of philosophy and politics and prompted disciplinary efforts – to eradicate distance, regulate foreigners, immobilize meaning, and stabilize friendship – that are remarkably structurally similar and sometimes mutually supportive, but that both Heidegger and Derrida, by contrast, undertake a significant revaluation of distance and the foreignness and indeterminacy associated with it. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper looks at the state of the literature surrounding Heidegger and Nazism today. Part 1 focusses on Hassan Givsan’s remarkable work, Une histoire consternante: pourquoi les philosophes se laissent corrompre par le “cas Heidegger”, which looks at the different, mutually inconsistent forms of “apologetics” denying that Heidegger had been a Nazi, or that this commitment could have been shaped by his philosophy. Part 2 looks at five themes that emerge from the 2014 French-language collection Heidegger, le sol, la communauté, (...) la race, edited by Emmanuel Faye: Heidegger’s anti-semitism, before and in the Black Notebooks; Sein und Zeit and “the political”; Heidegger and his estate’s post-war “rewriting” of his Nazi-era texts; Heidegger’s esotericism; and his intellectual proximities to other Nazi thinkers. Closing reflections touch on the state of the debate, calling for increased scholarly awareness of the evidence, and debate of its significance. (shrink)